Written by: April J. Buchanan
I am often saddened for the man who preaches strong and convicting sermons that raise the standard and yet offers no grace, no mercy. He sets his message against the weakened pulpit of the day, and his words reveal a man well learned and so lofty in his understanding of divine truths that he may argue against heresy, against error, against the world. And yet when he takes to the pulpit and shepherds the sheep, he continues his abrasive tongue, arguing against such men, never leaving the arena of controversy. He leaves behind neither the debate nor the lecture, but shows that much of what he teaches has never reached his own heart. While it may be doctrinally precise, it is only in part.
Coming out of bad theology, I needed to hear those doctrines that confronted my errors and false beliefs. I am grateful for those who preached with conviction. I also learned to be careful of those who had gone to greater extremes, having swung too far in the other direction. However, what I have come to find is that there are men who are qualified to write books, teach as professors, defend the faith, and perhaps serve well in other fields of academia, but who are not necessarily called or equipped to shepherd a flock. They are able to teach. They are able to defend against error. They may be truly regenerate. They may possess great theological knowledge. But the ability to teach and defend the truth is not, by itself, the whole qualification for shepherding real people. The pastor must know the truth, but he must also know the people entrusted to his care and bring that truth to bear upon their actual souls. He must love them. Truly love them.
His words reach the minds of those who delight in such knowledge, but as the pulpit goes, so goes the pew. Some are puffed up in mind. Some are destroyed under the weight of lofty speech and words that expose but never heal, tear down but never build up. They are given truth without grace. Their words may well be enjoyed if they were not so lofty, but brought to bear upon the heart by the grace of God. Such men would agree that truth cannot merely be in the mind and not the heart, and yet their words speak to the mind and ravish the heart. They speak imperatives, but they do not speak of the real and powerful grace of God. They do not strengthen the weak or refresh the soul. Such things are too weak for them. In an effort to uphold truth amid many weak pulpits, they preach with conviction, but their words are not shepherding. They are the words of a lecturer to a student.
A man may well guard the sheep from error and proclaim holy doctrines that declare with conviction the glories of God, and yet the sheep may recognize the dangers without and glory in the high and holy doctrines of God. But if those truths are not realized in the heart of the shepherd, it will be evident in his care of the sheep and in their love for one another.
It is not the pastor who preaches the most truth or the most love that the saint needs. The saint needs the whole counsel of God. He needs neither a lecturer in the pulpit nor a man who offers nothing but love without truth. He needs a biblically qualified man who is able to teach and who is a man of proven character. That is a man in whom the Word is continually working upon his own heart.
Such a man cannot merely lecture. Nor can he preach the world’s message of love. He is called to shepherd the sheep according to God’s Word, not merely with it on his tongue, or possessing it in his mind, but with that Word working in his own heart.
Far too many in the pulpit do not sound like David, do not sound like Paul, do not sound like men with the Word wrought in their hearts. They sound like the tongues of skilled men exposing a text that has not worked in their own hearts, or like men who have taken up the world’s favorite isolated verses, or like dead men who preach to dead men. Few and faithful are those men who are both able to teach and in whose hearts the Scriptures work deeply. Thereby they shepherd not only to the minds of men, but to their hearts, as men who have themselves had their minds and hearts exposed to the text.
Likewise, the saints in the pew. Some of the most faithful saints are those who are not able to argue or debate deep things, but who have been so searched by the Scriptures and have found God faithful in those divine truths that the love they share and the truth they proclaim is genuine. It has the power to humble the most wise man. It is that which they truly know and can testify to.
May we humble ourselves under the Word. May we truly know Him, and may our love be the outworking of His continual and abiding work in us. May we sit in the company of faithful saints and under faithful exposition, not cold academics, not false fire, or mysticism, but truth spoken by a shepherd who knows the Lord. Not scholars dressed in shepherds’ clothes, nor wolves dressed as shepherds devouring the flock.
Come, O saint, and hear the glories of God revealed in Christ among His saints. Set your mind and heart upon divine truths, and let those realities be known among the saints.
“I have thought as I have listened to our eloquent friends, that they imagined that our Lord had said, ‘Feed my camelopards.’ None but giraffes could reach the food when placed in so lofty a rack. Christ says, ‘Feed my sheep,’ place the food among them, put it close to them.”
— Charles H. Spurgeon, “Feed My Sheep”
Where we sit matters.
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